Personhood and Abortion Rights

[_Markk]

I don't disagree with you. I do have other ideas that compete with that concept. For example, a woman's right to make choices about her body, how she views her body, and exercise her beliefs in what constitutes a life, a baby, etc.

I can't bring myself to impose my beliefs on her. I don't live in her head. I don't live her life. I don't experience the world as she does. I am not her. She has as much a right to exercise and act on her beliefs as I do.

We should both have the right to exercise our beliefs and that's what we have. At the moment at least.


I think you have it right especially as you demonstrated in your examples regarding priesthood and slavery. I'll admit those comparisons were unexpected, but the comparison to slavery in particular tells me how you understand it and I do think you understand it.



I'll go you one better. How were women viewed in those old Bible times?


Again, I don't disagree.

But I will tell you this, too. I would just as easily support an unwed mother who wanted to keep her baby as I would accompany and provide after care for one who chose not to.

In my world, both hands would get held.

Where it get mo sticky...

Do you believe in late term abortions, say a week or two before birth? My guess is many if not most pro lifers don't. So in these cases it turns from the woman's right to choose, to the right of life for the child.

Just on this thread there are different lines, and most just move the time line of rights for the mother and rights for the child around. Government intervention (enforced laws) are implied , but not admitted too.

In regards to this conversation, my example about personhood and priesthood is getting lost...the example is to show certain people, living persons, are excluded from certain rights...slaves were, and the other tribes were, the brotherhood of carpenters do not allow the brotherhood of electricians to do carpenter work on a union job...etc. The point is, the term fill in the blank-hood is a man made ideology to limit others certain rights. I'll make one up here...there is a brotherhood of ex-Mormon's here, the some never-Mo's here that can not join this brotherhood.

To say a person in the beginning stages of life, whether from fertilization, different trimesters, birth, infancy, adolescent, puberty, adulthood, and old age are not persons, is a man made concept to support ideologies. We do this to justify our conscience, for convenience, for money, for power...etc.

Racism uses this also...with slavery certain person were not given certain rights, based on the concept of personhood...if I am misunderstand this happened...please show me my error? we can P-hack the heck out of it...but the bottom line is generally american slavery did not allow perosonhood to slaves. And like wise many do not assign personhood to the child in the womb, which the right to life.

Not a easy discussion and I certainly don't have all the answers.

[_Maksutov]

Not a easy discussion and I certainly don't have all the answers.

+1,000

[_honorentheos]

Incidentally, I find the concept of 'personhood' so hard to define clearly that I don't think it helps much to try to use it to find a simple way through the ethical labyrinth round this issue.

If one hopes to find a simple way though, nothing is going to help get there because that would be a naïve perception of the issues involved.

[_honorentheos]

I think at least some posters here get fetal personhood as it relates abortion arguments.

Sure. You chose to engage a specific post presented as a response to someone who doesn't, whose argument also serves to illustrate why dodging the issue doesn't negate it's central position to the debate.

I think all the good arguments for the pro-choice position turn on fetal non-personhood.

The best arguments for why a fetus, at least up to some point in the process of development, "lacks the rights understood to otherwise prevent ending it's development" hinge on arguing the fetus "lacks the rights understood to otherwise prevent ending it's development"? You don't say.

[Guest]

In regards to this conversation, my example about personhood and priesthood is getting lost...the example is to show certain people, living persons, are excluded from certain rights...slaves were, and the other tribes were, the brotherhood of carpenters do not allow the brotherhood of electricians to do carpenter work on a union job...etc. The point is, the term fill in the blank-hood is a man made ideology to limit others certain rights.

This gets the issue exactly backward. Slaves get denied rights by the definition of what it meant to be a slave, not by ideology but by the way groups of people simple work in order to coexist. Slavery as a concept gets rebuked by counter concepts arguing that the person being called as slave is, in fact, of a same class as the person not being defined as a slave. It doesn't happen because the universe imposed itself against man-made concepts. The rights afforded are part of the definition, but don't exist absent that definition. The "right" to get a permit from the City to wire a commercial building, have it inspected and a Certificate of Occupancy granted hinge on definitions needed to make society work above the level of people's varied, often conflicted intuited assumptions of how the world works. You might not think the state should have a say because being an electrician should be defined by having a pair of wire cutters and access to YouTube DYI videos. The person insuring the building and businesses that will occupy it might not be so comfortable with that definition. The state taking an interest in who gets to sell their services under the title "electrician" is necessary for society to operate in a reasonable manner.

Personhood is a term with meaning in the debate regarding abortion. It's title, "personhood" is meant to capture what the debate is about based on competing less sufficient concepts but what it symbolizes doesn't remove itself from the debate because someone thinks it is interjecting unnecessary terms.

[_EAllusion]

I think all the good arguments for the pro-choice position turn on fetal non-personhood. And, in truth, I find people who are arrogant about being pro-choice even granting fetal personhood to be just as obnoxious as pro-lifers who just assume fetal personhood. There's almost a 1:1 overlap between that group and people who think opposition to pro-choice views only comes from misogynistic disrespect of female bodies and self-determination. It's almost a mirror of pro-lifers who think they're debating with people who are pro-convenience murder in terms of its lack of charity and unwillingness to understand what they're disagreeing with.

All that said, I think at least some posters here get fetal personhood as it relates abortion arguments.

In my view this thread demonstrates the extreme difficulty of trying to deal with the complex ethical dilemmas of abortion by writing down explicit legal rules. We do it because in an advanced western society we can't avoid doing so, not because it is likely to avoid conflicts about this issue.

There is just no way of writing an abortion statute that will not, from time to time, produce results that are widely seen as excessively limiting the rights of a pregnant women, or conversely as extending them to an unreasonable extent.

Incidentally, I find the concept of 'personhood' so hard to define clearly that I don't think it helps much to try to use it to find a simple way through the ethical labyrinth round this issue.

There's a pro-choice argument that goes something like this:

Because people can reasonably disagree on the correct moral position with respect to abortion, this is not a topic the law can easily ajudicate. Therefore, while abortion may plausibly be morally wrong, it is best left to a personal decision. A person should not face legal penalties for something they can reasonably do in good faith and plausibly may be proper.

The inverse pro-life argument goes something like this:

Because it is plausible that abortion entails the immoral ending of a life, it should be made illegal because it is appropriate for the law to force people to err on the side of caution when the stakes involve a realistic chance of depriving someone of their right to life.

"Personhood" just refers to a status that entails having moral and legal rights. It is really difficult to figure out what should count as a person and why at the margins, but you can't escape having a view on this. Our entire moral and legal framework depends on taking definitive positions on that subject.

[_EAllusion]

The best arguments for why a fetus, at least up to some point in the process of development, "lacks the rights understood to otherwise prevent ending it's development" hinge on arguing the fetus "lacks the rights understood to otherwise prevent ending it's development"? You don't say.

This is wierdly reductive. This makes me think you are adopting an overly restrictive definition of personhood. It's possible for a fetus to be a person and it also be proper to kill it in an abortion. Personhood isn't defined by it never being Ok to end a being's life. It's possible that both you and a fetus are a person enjoying the same rights, but those rights don't entail being able to use another person's body to sustain your life.

[_Themis]

You should then pay attention to what you stated. You stated they should have a choice to abort in situations of rape. That is a statement that puts the women's right to choose above the right of the fetus to live. You can't have it both ways Markk.

Themis, I said a lot more than that in context, I also said it does not make it right. If you believe that fine, I do not...and you have every "right" to support that opinion. But please quote me in entirety and in context.

It still does not change the fact you have admitted women should have a choice to abort a fetus for reasons of rape. I understand you think it a bad choice, but you said it is a choice they should have. That is a statement putting a value of choice above the life of the fetus even if both the fetus and mother are healthy.

Well, I disagree, I don't believe life is a club, or any person can be excluded from being a more special person with more individual rights. Are there certain children that can or should be excluded from childhood, or adulthood?

All of us put different values on different people all the time. Almost everyone recognizes the life of the mother as greater value then the life of the fetus meaning most would want the mother to live over the life of the unborn if it comes to a choice between the two. We tend to value the life of the young more compared to the life of the old. I doubt there are many who would not choose the two year old over the life of the unborn if a choice had to be made.

What attribute does a more developed person have that a less developed person does not have, in regards deciding a innocent persons life? I don't get that at all.

A Embryo is not a person. It has the potential to develop into a person. A women should have the right to decide if they want to be pregnant and let the embryo continue it's development into a person just as women all the time make choices to try and get pregnant or try and avoid becoming pregnant. As soon as they reach puberty the potential exists of creating dozens of persons over several decades.

What attribute does a baby have that would allow them to live outside the womb, that the don't have in the womb...I am really curious what these attributes are?

No idea what you are talking about

So is the reason you don't like abortions and would "discourage" them is because it causes pain to the child? In other words it is okay if the are killed, but it should be a painless death...it that a fair assessment of what you are saying?

It should be as painless as possible for any creature that may feel pain.

Who in your mind should discourage this at the social level, and how, and who decides the benchmark of when the child feel pain?

The relevant science is the only one with the skill set to determine questions of whether or when a fetus may feel pain, and decisions of terminating the fetus should be keep to the mother and her doctor.

yes I did. I told him and you why I draw the line where I do..I was clear, very open, transparent and honest...and even conceded that "right or wrong" it was what I believe.

Kevin started with a false premise by stating it does not happen for five days, then went to 3-5 days , when it fact fertilization can start minutes, or hours, or 5 days from intercourse. It can take five days in that the sperm can hang out in the reproductive system of a female for up to five days, but it could also be minutes or hours until the sperm meets the egg.

His assertion was that the MAP tale the next morning was not terminating the process in that he claimed it did not start for five days. I corrected him and told him we have no way of knowing that, so his point is mute.

So again he started with a very inaccurate premise.

You have been shown you were the one in the wrong now.

You did not comment on the photo I pasted?

And what am I supposed to comment on? I suppose you are attaching person-hood even though you have never defined what person-hood is. There is a tendency for People to attach person-hood even to things like rocks, so how is an embryo a person in such a way as to have the same rights as the mother?

[_honorentheos]

The best arguments for why a fetus, at least up to some point in the process of development, "lacks the rights understood to otherwise prevent ending it's development" hinge on arguing the fetus "lacks the rights understood to otherwise prevent ending it's development"? You don't say.

This is wierdly reductive. This makes me think you are adopting an overly restrictive definition of personhood. It's possible for a fetus to be a person and it also be proper to kill it in an abortion. Personhood isn't defined by it never being Ok to end a being's life. It's possible that both you and a fetus are a person enjoying the same rights, but those rights don't entail being able to use another person's body to sustain your life.

You should think I'm simply pushing back on your attempt to divert the debate to this smaller argument at the expense of the bigger issue that, out of a certain necessity, simplifies personhood to wedge it into the narrow thinking on display where it's being dismissed as overly complicating things. Be clear, I'm dismissing you because the debate over competing rights is in another place entirely from what is being discussed in this thread outside of your discussion with Res.

[_honorentheos]

"Personhood" just refers to a status that entails having moral and legal rights. It is really difficult to figure out what should count as a person and why at the margins, but you can't escape having a view on this. Our entire moral and legal framework depends on taking definitive positions on that subject.

This.

It takes accepting this as a pre-condition to then have the debate you are accusing me of missing. I'm ignoring that because ^THIS^ is being missed by people ranging from Chap to Markk and people in-between. Jersey Girl's position, or the version of it I chose from to use as illustration, is reasonable for use in making the case for the quoted statement above. You want to then argue about whether or not a mother's rights might justify ending a pregnancy even at points during fetal development past when the conditions of personhood are assumed to be met? That's fine once the discussion arrives there.